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KindMind writes: At Wired, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has posted his take on net neutrality. He lays the problem at the feet of the large ISPs. Hastings says, "Consider this: A single fiber-optic strand the diameter of a human hair can carry 101.7 terabits of data per second, enough to support nearly every Netflix subscriber watching content in HD at the same time. And while technology has improved and capacity has increased, costs have continued to decline. A few more shelves of equipment might be needed in the buildings that house interconnection points, but broadband itself is as limitless as its uses. We'll never realize broadband's potential if large ISPs erect a pay-to-play system that charges both the sender and receiver for the same content. ... It's worth noting that Netflix connects directly with hundreds of ISPs globally, and 99 percent of those agreements don't involve access fees. It is only a handful of the largest U.S. ISPs, which control the majority of consumer connections, demanding this toll. Why would more profitable, larger companies charge for connections and capacity that smaller companies provide for free? Because they can."

Not that I disagree, but right now I'm just finding it funny how Hastings can complain about ISPs doing bad things while he remains conspicuously silent about Hollywood forcing draconian DRM into Netflix and, indirectly, into the HTML5 spec itself. Maybe the major ISPs should look into buying Hastings' silence too. It would help with their PR.

Hastings, Netflix, and 99.999999% of all streaming customers give approximately 0 fucks about DRM. They pay Netflix, they see the content, there's simply no problem. And they're right. Technology makes life better by working. If it "just works", then it's fine. This ISP-throttling-Netflix BS, OTOH, is punishing customers until Netflix caves. That's not fine.

as anyone who's ever wanted to save a Netflix movie for offline viewing on a flight

They offer that service separately, and I use it all the time: DVDs - but for most people that's a corner case. The problem most people have with Netflix (myself included) is the tiny amount of streaming content in the first place. Even with the DRM they can barely get any content owners contracted. The studios just have recto-cranial inversion over streaming in the first place - the DRM is just a distraction from the real issue.

You're supposing that the DRM is there merely to appease Hollywood. Ever consider the possibility that Hastings might not want their customers downloading movies for watching two years after their subscriptions have expired?

As for offline viewing (something others are mentioning in response as a thing-you-can't-do-because-DRM), Amazon has that. Rhapsody too (albeit for music.) The files are DRM'd too. Netflix can implement offline viewing with the DRM being used to restrict the timeframe used to view the

An interesting gun... Here in People-Who-Are-Actually-Professional-Network-EngineersVille, we'd simply accept that our current cheapest-available-transit-provider has shitty connectivity (really? Cogent? really really? Well done, Netflix. Not pinching any pennies, at all) and get a provider that didn't offer bargain bin connectivity and shitty routes to just about everyone. But hey. It's entirely the receiving network's fault.

An interesting gun... Here in People-Who-Are-Actually-Professional-Network-EngineersVille, we'd simply accept that our current cheapest-available-transit-provider has shitty connectivity (really? Cogent? really really? Well done, Netflix. Not pinching any pennies, at all) and get a provider that didn't offer bargain bin connectivity and shitty routes to just about everyone. But hey. It's entirely the receiving network's fault.

FTR, NetFlix uses a number of different transit providers, not just Cogent.

Then I suggest they start routing their Comcast bound traffic out one of those other providers. I'd be happy to help them do it, but I have a sneaking suspicion technical capability isn't the hold-up. I certainly have had to do it many times for our content provider customers... Then again, we have 6 different upstreams, and we only use Cogent for the people who really, really don't care how bad their connectivity is. The pricing is good enough to leave the circuit their idle, not hitting commit, and not ca

Then I suggest they start routing their Comcast bound traffic out one of those other providers. I'd be happy to help them do it, but I have a sneaking suspicion technical capability isn't the hold-up. I certainly have had to do it many times for our content provider customers... Then again, we have 6 different upstreams, and we only use Cogent for the people who really, really don't care how bad their connectivity is. The pricing is good enough to leave the circuit their idle, not hitting commit, and not care.

I don't know who they have with Comcast, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had multiple transit connections from multiple transit providers to Comcast already.

I also wouldn't be surprised to see Comcast and Verizon purposefully degrading Netflix in order to promote their own products (f.e Comcast's Xfinity) instead.

I run a network with pretty significant content provider traffic, as well as a whole ton of eyeball traffic.

I absolutely do have to troubleshoot path-to-comcast congestion issues frequently. However, across my 6 upstreams, I have been able to find paths that are not congested at any point in time. I will not sympathize with Netflix for refusing to invest a few of their zillions of dollars into some clever network engineers. This process is even easier when you're dealing with outbound content provider tra

I have heard rumors at least twice, from two different people that I trust (sorry for the "cloak and dagger" bullshit) that Hastings has investigated creating an ISP, but that the hurdles and bullshit threshold is just too high. That makes me sad. There is so much opportunity for innovation, so much potential to move away from the shitty 6Mbps "broadband" in most of America, but the Verizons & Comcasts buy their way out of the problem every time. And yes, the government (both parties, I'm looking at

Netflix does not have to pay ATT/Comcast/Verizon a single dime. All it needs to do is [...] buy proper transit

So they don't need to pay those three, but they must pay someone, for what amounts to transit to themselves. Transit was a concept when a small ISP bought from a large ISP to get the small number of users to The Internet across unequal networks. Peers are when the networks were more even.

It was always from the consumer point of view. Only recently did the concept of charging content for content transit. If my ISP is charging for content transit, I want my rebate/discount. They are getting paid twice for the same thing.

This delusional refusal to acknowledge that anything but outright violence could ever be coercive is the acid that's quickly dissolving whatever credibility capitalism still has left and exposing the grinning skull of feudalism beneath the mask of prosperity. I wonder what economic system will replace it, once people finally get tired of having structural flaws treated as unchangeable laws of nature or blamed on their victim's personal weaknesses?

The current climate is just like that which preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union: the prevailing myths are so much out of sync with reality people are running out of willing suspension of disbelief and losing their faith. No one believes anymore that hard work will be repaid with anything but layoffs, or that business success comes with a superior product rather than gaming the system, or that the rules are the same for everyone. The system has already lost its beating heart of credible mythology that can organize behaviour, it's just a matter of time before the necrosis of anarchy spreads everywhere.

The soviet government was unable to keep the lie going. The USA government does not have that problem: They are funded by biased taxation and trade agreements, a monopoly on many forms of intellectual property, a monopoly on 'world police' duties, and sale of most of the international currency. When all that fails, they simply invent 1/3rd of their federal revenue from thin air.

The US government is hardly synonymous with capitalism. Whether that's a good or bad thing I won't get into, but it's entirely pos

Why, of course! What IDIOTS they are to have never ever considered such things! You should probably start your own competitor, except like ebay and facebook but better. I hear you can hire people on craigslist.

CDNs cost too much. It's hard to compete with 2 cents/megabit Cogent upstream pricing. Of course it will suck. That's why you're paying 2 cents/megabit for it. It's no damn wonder Netflix is pushing so damn hard for peering arrangements. They don't want to pay for bandwidth anymore. It's a sound business model. They're also being dishonest as all fuck about it, and trying to turn it into a net neutrality issue, when it isn't.

What's so unreasonable about this? Netflix isn't wanting this for free, they are wanting peering agreements.Basically, they are saying, let us run fiber directly to you so that:
1) Our customers get a faster connection
2) Your customers get a faster connection to us.
3) Your customers are no longer bogging down your internet connection with traffic to us
4) Your customers get a faster connections to the rest of the internet
5) You don't have to buy bigger pipes to the rest of the internet therefore saving money.etc...

It's a win/win for all involved. There is no reason money needs to be continually exchanged as it's now a privatelan between the two companies and I'm sure Netflix would gladly pay for the hardware.The only reason they don't want to peer with netflix is because they feel like they own the customers andare willing to hold their own customers hostage in the hopes that netflix will cave.Netflix unfortunately is not critical enough to do the opposite. (i.e. peer with us or your customerscan't use netflix) as netflix actually has competition unlike the people they are trying to peer with.

You forgot the most important reason. They are trying to degrade a competitor's service in order to promote their own. Both Comcast and Verizon compete directly with Netflix. Last night I was able to watch Verizon channels on my tablet just fine, but Netflix wasn't working at all.

Are there actually any ISPs refusing to peer who are NOT content providers? My understanding is that companies who are both ISPs and content providers want to cause trouble for Netflix on the ISP side so they don't have to compete on the content side. If there are ISPs refusing to peer who are not biased in this manner, I would assume they must have a more compelling argument?

The lie you have bought into is that destination traffic is the same as transit traffic.

The whole point of peering agreements is to stop one provider from piggybacking on another transit providers network to reduce their costs. The agreements are structured so that to reach various end points they transit the traffic as closely as possible to the destination then hand it off to the hosting network rather than hand it off at the first available point and allow it transit the other networks system.

This whole arrangement falls flat on it's face when one of those transit providers is also the major destination route for millions of customers. ISPs that provide residential service always have unbalanced traffic arrangement because the customer almost always requests more data then they send. As long as L3 and Cogent are handing this destination traffic off to Verizon at the closest possible peering point for their subscribers then Verizon shouldn't be able to request the the traffic be balanced.

The problem is that unregulated market forces have allowed monopoly providers in local markets to combine with the very limited number of Tier 1 network operators resulting in the almost immediate abuse of monopoly by the Tier 1 portion of the network leveraging the monopoly side of the residential ISP business. There is rather simple solution to this problem. Bar any ISP that offers services directly to residential customers from owning or operating long haul national networks. If Verizon was forced to separate their Tier 1 transit business from their Residential ISP business (as in either divesting the assets or separating the company into two distinct companies) the problem would be solved almost immediately.

Businesses with monopolies will abuse them, that's the whole point of regulating free markets, because without that regulation you will end almost immediately with companies abusing market position and breaking the free market. Free markets don't stay free without regulation, particularly businesses with massive capital start up costs such as residential ISPs. Without regulation you end up with Verizon's Tier 1 network business leveraging the monopoly residential ISP traffic to extract rent from competing providers. This is a rent the market would not support without the monopoly or with regulation to prevent it's abuse.

I used to run a big adult site. We wanted servers closer to the customers for speed. We made enough that we didn't really care about the connection costs. We'd put up server farms around the world where it suited our customers best.

We owned every piece of equipment in our cabinet or cage (depending on the location). The provider equipment ended at the fiber they dropped to us, and the power outlets.

Their own CDN site [netflix.com] talks about putting Netflix gear out for free. So they are basically saying they want the free ride. No one gets rack space, power, and connections for free. The right thing to do would be to lease the space like everyone else does.

But hey, they're loving to cry about being treated unfairly. They are the loudest ones about it. Honestly, other than speed complaints that are usually a fault, not a conspiracy, I don't know of anyone else talking about the same thing.

It is possible that the world is ganging up on Netflix. It happened to Cogent, more than once [google.com]. That was mostly they refused to pay on their contractual obligations.

Their own CDN site talks about putting Netflix gear out for free. So they are basically saying they want the free ride. No one gets rack space, power, and connections for free.

I know a guy who is a network engineer at a regional ISP. They are ecstatic about hosting Netflix gear "for free" because of all the money they save! Despite the consensus here, bandwidth isn't free, it's a huge expense. And their largest use case is Netflix. By hosting the Netflix servers at the data center, they cut their network traffic by something like half.

It's not for free. The ISP gets a serious reduction in network congestion as a result. I'm a network planner for a national ISP in the US and deploying these caches has seriously cut down on our network load. For the cost of space and power for this cache I regained capacity on the network which would have cost 100s of thousands of dollars to build. You've fundamentally misunderstood the benefit to the ISP of deploying these. The only ISPs that don't deploy these are the ones that also get a lot of revenue from video such as Cable and FTTH providers. They don't WANT to reduce the congestion because it boosts their IPTV revenue.

This. And this is precisely the sort of monopoly abuse that let to the breakup of Ma Bell. The ISPs are offering non-connectivity services, then deliberately degrading service to companies that compete with those services. Monopolies like ISPs should absolutely not be allowed to do this. A company should either be an ISP or a content provider. As soon as you allow any company to be both, it pretty much guarantees abuse. The bigger the company, the bigger the abuse.

I'm not sure if you are unfamiliar with the situation or just have a portfolio full of ComCast stock but There is some very insightful material over at Level 3 [level3.com] that paints a clear picture of just who is ganging up on who. And Netflix isn't the only Internet site that suffers from these ISP's greed. They just happen to be the largest. And as far as their CDN how is relieving the congestion on your network not a payment in and of itself? Netflix traffic from the backbone would decrease 90% once they are allowed to put their CDN inside your network leaving you free to use it for other traffic. If Netflix is causing the congestion then allowing them to put their CDN in is a win/win but ISPs want Netflix to lose so their on demand service can pick up those customers. If you truly want the truth then read the articles in the link.

Blatantly not true. Comcast is not paying for transit, they are peering with the transit ISP that Netflix pays. Netflix tried to establish direct peering with Comcast. This means Comcast needs to pay for the operational and capital expense of a port and maintaining the peering relationship. So I'd say it's exactly reversed: Netflix want Comcast to pay for their transit reduction.

Netflix said CDNs were not able to keep up with demand and all those peering issues, so Netflix decided to do it themselves. Commercial CDNs are great for small companies that can't afford to create contracts with every ISP out there. This is how those CDNs make money, by charging lots of relatively small data companies. Since these CDNs have SLAs to up hold, they are willing to pay ISPs to make sure their SLAs are met.

Modern SLAs are more about latency and jitter. Netflix doesn't care about this. Netflix

Well - if the content providers outright denied to provide content to ISPs that want money for the traffic it would hurt the content providers but it would hurt the ISPs more since the customers would look for other providers.

However as soon as a content provider starts to pay they will be part of the problem and not provide any solution.

Now we need the quasi-obligatory response that this is really a government problem, and if government weren't in there mucking about with needless regulation the free market would address the problem and we'd all be in broadband utopia at reasonable prices.

Now we need the quasi-obligatory response that this is really a government problem, and if government weren't in there mucking about with needless regulation the free market would address the problem and we'd all be in broadband utopia at reasonable prices.

Perhaps I don't quite understand your wording and this is not double speak, but assuming you wrote correctly this is a Government problem. At least in the realm of what the Governments role is supposed to be in a Capitalist economy.

The majority of monopolization in the US is due exactly to monopolization by Government intervention. You may have to go deep to see it, and many people don't want to look that far, but it's all there. Start with Patent law and work your way out. Even if I could provide a bet

One problem leading to broadband monopoly is city ownership of city roads [mises.org]. What alternative would you recommend? The only one I can think of is burying a few conduits in advance when performing other utility maintenance, and then leasing each individual conduit to an ISP to blow its own fiber or copper.

Zoning for the infrastructure is the smallest part of the problem and the easiest to solve. It does however require thinking differently. To be very clear, this is not how things are, but how they should be in concept. Additional comments at the end of this post are not directed at you, please take no offense (I try to warn trolls away).

The Government is not supposed to "own" any land. They are supposed to work with the citizens to zone it properly, but the citizens own the land because the Government

What alternative would you recommend? The only one I can think of is burying a few conduits in advance when performing other utility maintenance, and then leasing each individual conduit to an ISP to blow its own fiber or copper.

This isn't as crazy as it sounds. If the city owns the conduit, let's say a 6 inch pvc conduit and then rents it out at a nominal fee to anyone andeveryone who wants to send fiber down it. You could literally send thousands of strands of fiber down a single 6 inch conduit. Plenty of roomfor competition for anyone who wants to try to compete. Now the city only has to maintain a simple piece of plastic pipe and can distribute the costwith dozens of companies and each company gets to maintain their own fib

The government builds the infrastructure (roads), then allows everyone to use this (bus companies, truck companies, private cars), as long as they follow the rules of the road (including safety requirements on the vehicles, size limitations, etc) and they pay a road tax (depending on vehicle size/type/weight).

It's not hard to translate this into network service. Don't say it can't be done, it's exactly how it works in many European countries - with great results. W

.Perhaps I don't quite understand your wording and this is not double speak, but assuming you wrote correctly this is a Government problem.

That's true, the government has been implicit in enclosing the commons since 1235 and without common land to drag cable/fiber across you can't just start an ISP.

The majority of monopolization in the US is due exactly to monopolization by Government intervention.

Perhaps we need to stop the government from giving the aristocracy (the rich) the right to own the land and infrastructure built on our land. Traditionally there was private land, eg your house and immediate property and their was common land for the use of all. Government has removed the common part and given it to the lords and now naturally thos

But government is the problem, dumb-asses. The reason you only have one broadband provider in many areas is because local governments signed contracts with these corporations that allows them exclusive usage of communications infrastructure, state governments passed laws that prevent local municipalities from building their own infrastructure, and the federal government shields them from any sort of federal regulation through the FCC which now works for said companies due to regulatory capture.

Because this, just like healthcare, gun control, and the environment, is an absolutely unheard of problem that no one else in the world has ever had to confront and solve ever before.

I mean just look at Europe and Australia and Canada and the rest of the developed world.......shootings all the time cause they still havent solved gun crime yet either....And the internet....why they're just as bad off from monopolization sticking them with shoddy customer service, low speeds, high prices, and no consumer choice....And let's not forget healthcare...no one anywhere in the developed world can afford to even have children cause they cost an arm and a leg, everywhere.

Yep.We can't just look to other countries cause there are TOTALLY brand new unheard of problems that no one has ever faced or solved before, ever.

While I agree that ISPs are a big part of the problem, the downside isn't that we don't get our utopia, the downside is that other countries are able to provide a more competitive near-utopia, locking us out of a leadership position on development of the Internet. That's the real fail, here. If we fail to lead, there will be others that are all too happy to fill our shoes and take our money to do so.

While I'm quite certain there's that "because they can" factor in there, and I've seen it first-hand when working for companies, it's just not as simple as how much data tan go through the fiber. There's lots of hidden costs that have nothing to do with interconnect bandwidth, like switching gear, power used by said gear, maintenance costs related to that, including salaries for qualified technicians spread all over the coverage area available to handle issues and outages (not that

Netflix's Beast box full of SSDs that can handle 50k customers streaming HD have a peak load of 150watts and takes up 2Us. 20gb of bandwidth for the cost of $20 of electricity per month is not a bad deal. Maybe the ISP would be more happy paying $40k/month of dedicated bandwidth from Level 3.

John Oliver really said it well, explained the nature of the shake-down... these ISPs are simply being greedy and not realising that providing a quality fast connection to their subscribers is in their own interest, providing poor quality connection to services that other ISPs are providing good quality to only serves to hurt their reputation and good will with their own subscribers.
If was Netflix or any of these content providers that are providing great content for the ISPs, I'd play hardball.. it'd hurt their own bottom line for a while, but if they banded together with other content providers to enforce it, they would soon have the ISPs begging.... So what would I do? Notify customers of these big ISPs that within two months they will no longer be providing the full service via that ISP.. sit back and watch the ISPs customers leave in droves.. of course, this is just turning the tables on the ISP net neutrality rules, but when the ISPs are already playing hardball and have their own man in charge of the FCC, then it's time to give them a taste of their own medicine.

'Round here (Upstate NY), we're realistically limited to two ISPs. Verizon and Time Warner. Most of the area doesn't have access to FIOS, either... I'm talking about Verizon DSL. Neither seems to be looking to change the status quo. Sure, I'd be pissed if one or both were dropped by Netflix, but I can't switch to anyone else.

Sure, I'd be pissed if [TWC or Verizon DSL] or both were dropped by Netflix, but I can't switch to anyone else.

If the Internet connection where you live has become unusable, you could always switch to somewhere else. Compare this: I imagine a lot of people would like to move to a rural area, but they like the Internet more than they like the country.

Oddly, my cabin in the mountains has a fiber going through my meadow where bears are regularly seen, yet here in the middle of Sili Valley I can get either indifferent DSL speeds or unreliable cable connectivity supplied by idiots. Of course, I admit that having "fiber to the bear turd" is largely a matter of have a lucky rural location positioned between wireless operators that will pay for a carrier-grade fiber connection.

Sadly, moving to where you can get decent internet connectivity is not an option fo

I recently bought a saw off a fellow via an online ad - about 20 miles of travel from the 'big' town of 25,000 to a house in pretty much the middle of nowhere and accessible only by several miles on gravel roads. Lots of cows, hayfields, dense forest. Out of curiousity I ask him about the internet options - he was on 10mb dsl, as are most of the other people in that area. Similar story from friends who live out in the country about 8 miles from a town of a few thousand people in a different direction. T

John Oliver really said it well, explained the nature of the shake-down... these ISPs are simply being greedy and not realising that providing a quality fast connection to their subscribers is in their own interest, providing poor quality connection to services that other ISPs are providing good quality to only serves to hurt their reputation and good will with their own subscribers.
If was Netflix or any of these content providers that are providing great content for the ISPs, I'd play hardball.. it'd hurt their own bottom line for a while...

Uh, their bottom line? Have you not noticed that these companies are making not millions, but billions these days? You're going to get customers to leave in "droves"? Oh, that's a laugh. There's still "droves" of customers left. Think they care? No, not really. They still made a few hundred million this quarter.

Arrogance is the real problem with the companies that should have never been allowed to grow to the size they are today. We don't call them a monopoly because we're big fans of old board gam

In many cases, these big ISPs are also big Cable TV providers. Netflix (and Internet Video in general) threatens their Cable TV model and so must be dealt with. They can't simply block all access to Netflix. The FCC might be weak willed but it still has enough of a spine that it wouldn't ignore this. (Not to mention the lawsuits and bad press that the company would get.) Since they can't block it, they attack it with a two pronged attack:

1) Institute data caps and overage fees. This means there is no a hard limit on how much Internet Video you can watch. They might be forced to set them high at first, but that also means that they can leave them where they are and lock out HD streams. (Note that Time Warner Cable wanted to make a 5GB cap but was forced to back out of that plan due to bad press and customer outcry.) In the case of overage fees, this will direct money to the cable companies' pockets in case users still try to watch Internet TV. It also makes Internet TV more expensive so that Cable TV will look like a better deal by comparison (even though that "more expensive" is the result of the cable companies' overage fees).

2) Make fast-slow lanes. If Netflix doesn't pay up, their site will be slow and nearly unusable. Then the cable companies can tout how you won't need to wait for their video services to buffer. If Netflix does pay up then the cable companies make money off of Netflix. This will also force Netflix to raise their rates (to cover this new cost of doing business) resulting in a more favorable - to the cable companies - Netflix/Cable TV price comparison. (Just like the overage fees.)

So this isn't just the big ISPs not wanting to pay to upgrade their networks. It's also them protecting their old business models against these newfangled competitors.

Overage fees are nothing but pure evil. They did use to offer capped DSL and my cell phone data usage is still capped, I ran into it this summer as I was watching videos at the cabin but it doesn't have overage. What happens is at 80% I got a text that I'm getting close on my cap. At 100% I got a new text saying my quota is now up, I'll now either get very, very slow internet connection the rest of the month like enough to check email and barely browse the web, or I can pay up for additional quotas. Back wh

Notify customers of these big ISPs that within two months they will no longer be providing the full service via that ISP.. sit back and watch the ISPs customers leave in droves.. of course, this is just turning the tables on the ISP net neutrality rules, but when the ISPs are already playing hardball and have their own man in charge of the FCC, then it's time to give them a taste of their own medicine.

You forget who Comcast owns. They wholly own NBC and Universal Studios, two major sources of Netflix content. And they're already screwing with the availability of NBCUniversal content on Netflix. If Netflix tries to play hardball, a whole boatload of shows and movies will just vanish out of their catalog.

A media company that owns the last mile is an abomination, and the FTC should do something about it.

Netflix has been getting troubled by the telecoms a lot, but how about YouTube? Are they less bothered by the telecoms? Do they just not complain publicly as much? How does being a part of Google make their situation different than Netflix's?

Or, pull a Google, and do one town at a time and watch the incumbents suddenly offer free peerage and lower rates.

"One town at a time" was pretty much how the incumbents got where they are. Yes, they bought out other companies to get to the size they are, but those companies did it one town at a time, for the most part. Nobody fell off the turnip truck with billions of dollars putting cable in a hundred cities at the same time. It's like nobody comes out of the womb weighing 600 pounds, it takes a lot of time to get there, and THEN you get your own TV show.

Anyone who thinks they'll get to be the next Comcast or TWC by a massive multi-city buildout is, well, I'd rather they not clutter up the neighborhood with their poorly planned systems. They'll only be in the way of, and muddy the waters for, the next real competitor.

Obfuscant said in his comment that you need to be a 600 pounds media company to be able to get your own TV show, I was pointing out that Netflix was already big enough to have multiple shows of their own.

most netflix customers use it as a secondary service. it's the tiny percentage of cord cutters

Among some members of my family, I've detected a Grover Norquist mentality [wikipedia.org] against any increase in entertainment spending. To afford another $120 per year recurring fee, they'd have to cut out something else. Cord cutters in countries where over-the-top video on demand (OTT VOD) services such as Hulu and Netflix are available recognize that everything but the "festering pile of social ills" that is televised sports [cracked.com] is available on OTT VOD.

If not for Netflix taking on the fight, the ISPs would be attacking torrents as a huge problem along with propaganda ("OMG, think of the children!" or "OMG, terrorists use torrents!")

Torrents do not have protection like Netflix does. YouTube might also be a target, again be happy that torrents are not the #1 threat to ISP screwing their customers. When they were the #1 user, data caps, QoS games, tampering with packets and other schemes were developing. Thank you Netflix and YouTube for slowing the assaul

If not for Netflix taking on the fight, the ISPs would be attacking torrents as a huge problem along with propaganda ("OMG, think of the children!" or "OMG, terrorists use torrents!")

Torrents do not have protection like Netflix does. YouTube might also be a target, again be happy that torrents are not the #1 threat to ISP screwing their customers. When they were the #1 user, data caps, QoS games, tampering with packets and other schemes were developing. Thank you Netflix and YouTube for slowing the assault; ISPs had to give in a little due to customer demand for Netflix.

The only ISPs that are "screwing" their customers in this case are the ones in the US. The rest of the world doesn't seem to have an issue with Net(flix) Neutrality, and it's most likely because they have the infrastructure to handle it. The US Government gave the LECs money to do exactly that years ago; build out infrastructure. $200 fucking billion to be exact. That money was squandered and paid out in executive bonuses instead (as if we should be shocked).

Direct point-to-point links have no demands for other content. It's when you buy from an ISP who determines that they will not deliver part of the Internet they don't like. I've bought leased fibre services in many places, and nobdy has ever asked to put their content on it. The users have already paid someone for access to that Netflix stream, but that access provider is trying to extort additional profit from content providers.

Netflix putting all subs on one fiber is not a "direct point to point link", any more than all of comcast's subs in a community being on one fiber is. If Netflix is running the backbone and doing the content they are, for all intents and purposes, acting as an ISP.

If Netflix is running the backbone and doing the content they are, for all intents and purposes, acting as an ISP.

Why is the "I" in there? If Netflix is doing it, then it's a private network, not unlike an '80s frame relay network (just faster). They aren't providing "Internet". They are providing a video service.

By your logic, a cable TV network (with no data services) is an ISP because they are running a backbone and providing content.

Because it is almost a certainty that were Netflix to manage to provide the fiber to send their data to their subs, it would be based on internet technologies and protocols. You know there is a small-i internet and large-I Internet, and you can have one that is limited in access while the other one is the worldwide interconnect of all the small-i versions, don't you? (And before you point out that ISP has a capital 'I', that's because it is an acronym, not necessarily because it is only talking about large